


The Dragon King

by orphan_account



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Animal Transformation, Blue Spirit Zuko (Avatar), Curses, Dragons, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Gen, Kinda, Shapeshifting, Vigilantism, dragon!zuko, more like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24389305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A year after the end of the war, Zuko realizes there's more to the gift the firebending masters gave him than he originally thought.If only he'd listened to his uncle.
Relationships: The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 189





	The Dragon King

**Author's Note:**

> This work is equally inspired by old fair tales and the Disney cartoon from 2005, American Dragon: Jake Long.
> 
> I never thought I'd write that sentence in my life.

When Zuko is young, his uncle tells him stories of the world beyond their own. The world where the living do not go. In the world of the spirits, the strangeness reigns. Tilted colours paint the landscape. Time twists until it has no meaning. 

As Zuko grows, he loses interest in his uncle’s ramblings. The old man’s lost touch with reality, he thinks. 

“The spirits have a way of cursing us through gifts and gifting us through curses,” Uncle says one day. He sips his oolong and closes his eyes. 

Zuko would’ve done well to listen.   
  


* * *

Zuko is eleven when, for the first time, he realizes why the other men call his uncle The Dragon of the West. 

Sometimes, he wonders where that slain skin lay. The last dragon. The last scales and teeth and claws to ever grace the earth. 

The one time he tries to bring it up, his uncle shuts him down. 

“Some things,” he says, “are best left unsaid.”

Zuko should’ve ignored that one. 

* * *

When Zuko is sixteen, he relearns firebending from the dragons. The last of their kind, circling around each other in a dance as old as time itself. They remind him of the koi fish in the North, moving in tandem, balancing the world. 

The balance flows through him, from the spot where his spine meets his skull, down his back and then out through his limbs and stomach. This way, it’s different. Natural. His inner fire isn’t stoked by rage. His movements ebb and flow with the rhythm of his heart. Heat, Zuko supposes, is as essential to life as water and air. So he moves as such. 

His fire isn’t meant to raze cities. His fire is as natural as the breath in his lungs. 

And yet the roughened skin on his face aches even more than before. 

* * *

A year after the war ended, Zuko realizes there’s more to the gift the dragons gave him than he could’ve ever imagined. 

It starts with him in the empty arena, running through his movements. They’d become so familiar to him that his muscles flex and release without protest. There’s simple comfort in the movement; he doesn’t need to strain his mind as he works through a mountain of paperwork, he needs only to punch his fists high in the air and sweep his feet out and turn on his heels. 

It feels like coming home. 

So much so that Zuko doesn’t notice himself changing until he is well into it. His bones grind and shift. The muscles in legs ache and burn in protest as if he’d run a hundred miles, before then spasm. In the pit of his guy, something twists. For a minute, Zuko’s sure he’s dying. This has to be poison—has to be his spirit leaving his body. 

When he tries to yell, all that comes out is a deep roar. It echoes through the empty chamber. 

His arms contract to his sides and, deep in the muscle of his shoulder blades, the sinew pulls apart from itself and keeps pulling until it pushes through his skin. Zuko’s head aches as if it were splitting apart. From inside his mouth, his jaw stretches forward. Every inch of him feels as though it’s bathed in flame. He recoils starts the familiar and horrid sensation. 

But as quickly as it started, the heat snaps away. The draft of the room pricks at Zuko’s neck. His muscles still ache with the familiar fatigue of overtraining, but it isn’t painful, not anymore. 

But it isn’t _right_ either. 

When Zuko twists his head back, he sees what he became; when he looks at himself, he sees the smooth and scaled body of a dragon. The scales are deep blue—the colour of the ocean in a storm. From his back, a pair of leathery wings protrude. 

Zuko yelps. Agni above, he’s seen some strange things, but this is certainly the strangest. 

Panic clouds his mind. He shakes himself, desperate to peel away the transformation like a pair of old robes. 

It doesn’t work. 

He yells again, in equal parts frustration and fear. Instead of a scream, a steady flow of fire pours out of his mouth. It starts from the warmth in his stomach and runs up his throat. The fire, surprisingly, is what bothers Zuko the least about everything. Fire, for him, was familiar. Natural. A gift. Life. 

He closes his eyes and concentrates on calming himself. The fire is familiar—he grounds himself in that. 

As he concentrates on his breathing, he feels the scales melt away. His skin prickles and, for a moment, his chest tightens. It feels as though he jumped in lava. Zuko grits his teeth and rides out the pain. 

After the wave of heat rocks his body, he’s back to himself and on all fours in the centre of the arena. 

He stands numbly and dusts off his pants. 

It’s a blessing, he supposes, that he changes back. It’d be hard to rule the nation if he can’t speak. 

* * *

Over the next weeks, Zuko practices shifting into his dragon form. After the first time, the pain had lessens to a dull ache (even if his muscles do feel like mush afterward). 

He practices in the empty arena when he knows no one would be watching. Once he has a good handle on his transformation, he practices shifting in his bed chambers. As a dragon, he’s nowhere near as large as the dragons that were guarded by the Sun Warriors, but he still has to watch the way he moves. One night, feeling bold and drunk with the flush of energy the transformation brought, he knocks over a vase in his chambers with his tail. Luckily, he shifts back before the guards came bursting in. 

Zuko won’t let anyone see him. Even if his pride surges behind his breastbone when he shifts, he can’t share the pride with others. Half the Fire Nation and most of the rest of the world still thinks him a monster. 

The last thing he needs was to add fuel to the fire.   
  


* * *

He almost writes Uncle, one day. He has the letter in his hand. If anyone would understand, it would be him.

Zuko bites his lip. He crumples the parchment in his hand and burns it to cinders. 

Iroh had given enough of his life to Zuko. The least he can do is grant him leave to run his tea shop in peace. 

* * *

Zuko doesn’t realize it at first—he was too shocked to even notice it the first few times he transformed. 

As a dragon, his vision is perfect. In both eyes. Nothing is blurred; everything is brilliant.   
  


* * *

His other senses sharpen too. He can hear the rest of the palace buzzing about, even through the thick walls of his chambers. In the air, he can smell the lingering dew and the Uma blossoms from the gardens and the sea salt in the breeze. The taste of dust lingers on his tongue when he practices in the arena. 

The only sense that hasn’t changed (as far as he can tell) is his sense of touch. His roughened scales dull sensation. When he runs his hand—or, more aptly, his claw—over his silk bedsheets, Zuko can tell no difference from the rough bedding he’d camped on in the Earth Kingdom.

Nature has her give and take, he supposes.

* * *

He hears from Aang and the gang from time to time. They swap letters back and forth. They’re all too busy for how young they still are. _Agni_ , Zuko shakes his head to himself. Once, he believed that his life would calm down when the war ended. 

He can’t believe he’d once been so naive. 

In the latest letter, Aang says he and the others are leaving for Kyoshi Island. They want to help with rebuilding the village—a project that will take several months. And, he’d added, Suki was growing homesick. 

Zuko grimaces as he reads that part. He understands the deep ache of being separated from home too well. 

In his reply, he wishes them luck. Maybe, after Kyoshi, they’ll come to the capital. 

He hopes. 

* * *

As Fire Lord, there are things Zuko can’t do. 

It seems counterintuitive to Zuko—wasn’t the Fire Lord the only one in the nation who could do whatever he wanted? 

But he quickly realized that assumption had been childish. As a prince—as a _banished_ prince—no one paid any mind to what he did. 

As Fire Lord, the whole nation has him under their gaze. His brief dream of freedom was promptly extinguished after his coronation. He follows all the protocols and etiquette, he plays the courtly games and deflects the subterfuge with careful words. When he designs policy, he designs it with care. 

Every minute of it is beyond exhausting.   
  


* * *

It starts with a gang of thieves in the capital.

Zuko practices his transformation that night—he works on moving as swiftly in his dragon form as he can as his human self—when he hears the scream and the sound of shattering ceramics. 

He’s out his window and into the night sky before he consciously realizes what he’s doing. His wings ache, unused to use, but it’s not an unpleasant feeling. Instead, it’s freeing. Like stretching one’s legs after a long journey. 

With ease, he finds the thieves as they rummage through a shop of imports. “What was that,” the tallest of the three men whispers to the others. 

Zuko yanks them out by the scruff of their robes and drops them in front of a nightwatchman. 

As he peels back into the inky sky, he smiles to himself. For the first time in a long while, no one watches him. 

* * *

It doesn’t take long for the stories to spread: the blue dragon protects the city. Anyone with ill intent should ready themselves to face the beast and its sharp teeth. 

Zuko struggles to keep a straight face when he hears those stories—the worst marks he’d left behind were some light bruises. Still, stories have a way of taking on a life of their own. And, if the stories keep his city safe, he isn’t bout to stamp them out.   
  


* * *

One night, on the full moon, he ventures out farther from the palace than he’d ever dared. 

He sails over the choppy ocean waves. Whitecaps rise and fall as they crash on the horizon. Salty sea breeze runs over his scales and the spray flecks his face.

Like this, he’s free. 

In the din of the moonlight, he could see his reflection in the rough wake. For the first time since his transformation, he sees his face: white lines the blue; his sharp teeth stick down from the top of his jaw; his nostrils flare; his tongue forks out like that of a lizard. 

Zuko is the spitting image of the blue spirit. 

His face is unmarked. 

* * *

After that night, Zuko gets braver. He leaves the capital for the surrounding villages. Along the way, he stops muggers and thieves. He keeps his eye on young women walking alone—he makes sure they reach their homes safely. When the sun sinks behind the sea, he’ll swoop over the docks and shut down the smugglers. 

Sometimes, as he sits through the seemingly endless meetings, Zuko feels the tiredness prick at him from behind his eyes. 

He doesn’t mind. 

* * *

In another meeting on another day, he listens to Governor Ito drone on. 

“We’re directing too much funding to the refugees, my Lord. They need to learn to be self-sufficient.”

Zuko swallows his anger and narrows his eyes. “We will help those who need us,” he says, his tone level and boiling. 

Governor Ito blinks for too long. “Of course, my Lord.”

As he leaves the council room that afternoon, Zuko slips down the hallway after him. 

“He’s too soft,” the Governor says to his assistant. “He spent too much time with the Water Tribe peasants and those other _children._ His priorities aren’t right.”

The assistant nods dutifully. “You’re right, sir.”

“I’ll allocate those funds how I see fit.”

Zuko presses himself against a wall and bites his tongue and bides his time. 

That night, he visits Ito in his chamber. He holds the sharp points of his claws to the man’s throat. 

In his ridiculous nightclothes, the man trembles. “Agni please, spare me.” His bottom lip curls in and his eyes widen. 

Zuko pulls the man closer and then shoves him into his bed. In his place, he leaves the hastily scribbled note he’d brought with him: _the money goes to the people._

Governor Ito never complains again. 

* * *

For months, Zuko goes on like this.

* * *

Zuko flies through a village not far from the capital with his eyes wide and his ears twitching. The stories of the blue dragon worked: most criminals are too afraid to try anything now. For many nights in a row, he had nothing to stop. Even the nobles were watching themselves—Governor Ito’s change of heart seemed to have been contagious. 

But tonight, Zuko hears rumblings. Something is wrong here. There’s an unnaturalness in the air that would’ve made the hair on his neck stand—if he hadn’t been shifted. 

He lands on a patch of soft ground and listens. In the distance, from the depths of the forest, something rustles leaves and snaps branches and whispers in the wind. 

Zuko takes off. He slips through the forest with grace and darts toward the noise. When he reaches the source of the noise, he stops and cocks his head. He had expected many things. He hadn’t expected this. 

In a clearing, amongst the grasses and reeds, stands a fox, preening its fur. 

Zuko shakes his head at himself. Paranoia, he supposes. He’d been certain there was something that drew him here. 

After he scans the woods a final time, he flies away. It’s late, after all. 

In the morning, he sleeps through a meeting.   
  


* * *

From that night onward, Zuko sees foxes everywhere. He sees them in town. He watches them slip behind stalls at the docks. Once, he even sees one edge around the royal garden. 

He tries to ignore them, mostly. 

They aren’t doing him any harm. 

* * *

He’s on the outskirts of town one night when he hears a crash and a grunt of effort and a low curse. 

With a beat of his wings, he swoops toward the commotion. 

Behind a thatched-roof house, a man clad in dark clothes yanks on a rope that ties up an ostrichhorse. “Come on,” he says as he tries to calm the angry huffs from the animal. 

Zuko lets out a low, throaty sound as a warning. He lunges forward and pulls the man away from the ostrichhorse before shoving him back into the mud. 

The man yells and raises his hands to protect his face. “Agni, spare me,” he whispers. 

Zuko would, of course. But he grits his teeth to send a message. After all, the man needs to learn—

A scream breaks the night. It came from inside the small house. 

“Kenzou,” a woman cries as she rushed out the door with a small flaming dancing across her fingertips. 

“Himari, no! Go back inside.” The man, Kenzou, tries to wave her away. 

The woman doesn’t listen. She steps forward, rushing to the man’s side. 

But, as the light from her flame falls on Zuko, the colour slides out of her face. “No,” she whispers. “Please, leave us. Please. We’ve done nothing.”

The realization hit Zuko and left him reeling. His gut tightens. A warm heat rises into his cheeks. _Oh spirits._ He leaps back from the downed man with his head spinning. 

_I didn’t mean it,_ he wants to say. _I was only trying to help._

He can’t say any of that. Not now. He tries to raise his arms in surrender, but in this body the movement is awkward and wrong and every bit as threatening as he’d been before. 

From the perspective of the couple, he’d just attacked them, behind their house, for tending to their own animal. 

Zuko runs for a moment before lifting into the air. His heart rattles against his ribs. His gut twists and a wave of nausea pulses through him. _Nononono._ What had he done?

He collapses in a wheat field outside the city. Here, he feels a cool breeze running over his body. In the distance, crickets chirp. The crescent moon hangs low in the star spotted sky. 

He needs to calm down. To focus. He hadn’t meant what he did. He hadn’t. Zuko scrunches his eyes closed and draws his attention to the rise and fall of breath in his chest. 

Until something rustles in front of him. 

A fox sits in the field, its wide eyes locked on Zuko. 

Before Zuko makes sense of it, the fox steps forward and it’s fur and snout melt away. A young woman, no more than a few years his senior, stands in its place. Neither her long black hair nor her white robe flutter in the breeze. 

“Your majesty,” the woman says. “I am Kitsu. I was told you changed.”

If Zuko could speak, he still wouldn’t know what to say. But it doesn’t matter. He’s still reeling—he can’t change back until he calmed down. 

“I suppose you have changed, in a way,” the woman says. Her voice ripples through the air. “But not in any way that counts.”

 _I didn’t mean it._ Zuko takes a tentative step forward, but the woman raises her hand. 

“You are still the same brash, arrogant boy. You attack innocents. You abandon your duties. You use your power for your personal gain.”

 _It’s not like that._ The familiar beat of anger runs through his veins. 

The woman doesn’t seem to register his shift in attitude. Instead, she smiles coyly. “If you’re going to act like a beast, then you can stay like one.”

Before Zuko can react, a wave of white light slams into his body. He collapses backward and the weight of his chest squeezes the air from his lungs. Blind with rage and pain, he gasps for a breath. He can’t catch one. 

_No._

He pushes through the light and pain and confusion. He won’t go down this easily. Not without a fight. 

But when Zuko gathers his wits and his breath, he opens his eyes to find himself alone again. 

The night carries on and the crickets chirp and the stars shine and the breeze rustles the field as if nothing happened. 

Zuko shakes his head and limbs. He closes his eyes and focuses on shifting back. 

But, as he draws in his attention, he frowns. He can’t shift. The thought makes his head ring. He’scdone it a hundred times—it should be easy. Like slipping into a familiar coat. He just needs to concentrate. 

Except it’s not like before. His shift isn't blocked by his emotions. No—it’s like trying to open a locked door. His limbs and joints refuse to obey him. 

He’s stuck this way. And the fox woman, Kitsu, is the only one with the key. 

_Agni help him._

* * *

After a night of panic and fear in the field, Zuko’s head clears as dawn draws near. 

The fox-woman might not be the only one who can help him. There is another, obvious choice. He can’t believe he hadn’t thought of it immediately. 

And, besides, Zuko can’t stay in the field forever. He can’t go back to the palace either. 

Zuko needs to find the Avatar.

The last he heard from Aang, he was on Kyoshi Island. That was as good of a place to start his search as any. With a deep breath, he stretches out his wings and takes to the sky. He loses himself in the warm pink glow of its rising. 


End file.
